In the old days, companies sent the same marketing campaigns to all of their customers. Later, marketers began to understand that even simple grouping of their customers allowed them to run more relevant, effective and profitable campaigns. More recently, sophisticated marketers and retention experts – particularly in Internet companies – have discovered that applying the latest technologies to this challenge delivers far more targeted (and profitable) campaigns.

It has become increasingly difficult to catch and hold the attention of customers, let alone influence their buying decisions, with traditional loyalty marketing programs. The travel industry, for example, has seen a steep decline in brand loyalty, with just 8% of customers loyal to one hotel brand and 14% of passengers consistently using the same airline. .....READ FULL ARTICLE

I worked with a large membership organization (numbers changed to preserve confidentiality) where I learned about an aspect of email marketing that I had not encountered before. This company has about one million members who pay an annual membership fee of about $500 per year. The members receive direct mail once a month, offering them many different products. In addition about one third of them also are signed up for emails – receiving about three emails per month.....READ FULL ARTICLE